Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
One of the producer’s consistently top-notch vineyard designates, this vintage maintains the mystique, coaxing out earthy sandalwood, smoke, char and truffle around richer overtones of butterscotch, clove and baked plum. Balanced and succulent, this is a fun, complex wine.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2013 Pinot Noir Keefer Ranch Vineyard, from the cool micro-climate, Green Valley of the Russian River, offers notes of sassafras, sweet kirsch, dusty, loamy soil undertones, underbrush and leafy fall foliage. The wine is ripe, medium-bodied, tasty and complex, but a very earthy and autumnal style of Pinot offering considerable complexity. Drink it over the next 3-4 years.
While the Russian River Valley is a large appellation with multiple climate zones and soil types, it is best known for cool-climate varieties, with Pinot Noir as the most celebrated. The grapes benefit from a reliable late afternoon flow of Pacific Ocean fog through the Petaluma Gap and along the Russian River Valley that ensures slow and steady ripening and the preservation of grape acidity. Today many of California’s most highly regarded Pinot Noir vineyards are in the Russian River Valley, along with its sub-appellation, Green Valley.
Historically Russian River Valley Pinot Noirs had bright red fruit and delicate earthy, mineral notes. But changes in viticultural and winemaking practices have led to stylistic changes in some of the region’s wines. Adjustments to canopy management, among other techniques, have resulted in riper fruit and bolder wines as well. These show flavors of black cherry, blackberry, cola, spice and darker, loamy earth tones, accenting traditional Pinot Noir notes of strawberry, raspberry and light cherry.